New Haven Township, Huron County

How New Haven Township, Huron County began

New Haven Township was established in 1815 and named, like several Huron County neighbors, for the Connecticut hometown of many of its early settlers -- in this case New Haven, one of the towns British forces burned in 1779. The township's most distinctive community is not New Haven itself but Celeryville, a muck-farming settlement founded chiefly by Dutch immigrants who found the township's black, peat-rich soil ideal for celery and other vegetables that matured faster and yielded extra harvests compared with ordinary farmland. Willard city borders the township to the northwest and part of Plymouth village extends into its southeast corner.

Settled 1815, by Settlers chiefly from New Haven, Connecticut.

Where the name comes from

New Haven Township is named for New Haven, Connecticut, 'the native home of a share of the early settlers' -- one of the Connecticut towns burned by British forces in the Revolutionary War, whose displaced residents held Firelands land claims.

Before the town

The 1909 county history says there were no Indian villages or settlements in New Haven Township, but numerous bands went and came from the neighboring Wyandot settlement and the township lay in the hunting ground of the Seneca (Iroquois), with Wyandots (Hurons) and sometimes Delawares (Lenape) also seen; the southern Firelands had no villages, only camps along the Huron River. An Indian burial ground is said to have been on the east bank of the river, and early settlers found a circular earthwork with large trees on its embankments in the western part of the township, within the village plat. No dating or cultural attribution of the earthwork was given. The Huron-Richland county line forms the southern boundary.

• Circular earthwork at New Haven (earthwork) — western part of the township, within the New Haven village plat, prehistoric; culture not stated (archive.org)
• Reported Indian burial ground on the Huron River (burial) — east bank of the Huron River in New Haven Township, not stated (archive.org)

Timeline

1. 1810 — The first chopping for improvement is done in the township, and Caleb Palmer, a surveyor from Trumbull County, sows the first wheat on the ground where he later builds his home.
2. 1811 — Caleb Palmer puts up the first log cabin in the township, about a mile northeast of the future village on the road to Norwalk.
3. 1813 — Ruth, daughter of Caleb and Harriet Palmer, is born April 29, the first white child born in the township.
4. 1815 — New Haven Township is organized and named for the Connecticut hometown of many settlers.
5. 1815 — David and Royal N. Powers lay out New Haven village on April 8, on the plan of New Haven, Connecticut, with 118 lots around a diamond-shaped common; it is the second town plat laid out on the Firelands. The first township election is held August 17 with John Barney as chairman, and Sophia Barney teaches the first school.
6. 1816 — William Clark builds the first sawmill, on lot 65 in section 2; Caleb Palmer builds the first gristmill in 1816 or the next year on lot 57.
7. 1817 — James Skinner and Harriet Beymer, the first couple married in the township, wed in June at Reuben Skinner's house; on June 24 George Beymer, who had settled in 1815, dies, the first death in the township.
8. 1820 — New Haven is regarded as a rival of Norwalk and Mansfield in trade and manufacture; Joseph Dana teaches the first singing school about this time and is for many years the village schoolmaster.
9. 1822 — The first Fourth of July celebration of which any record survives is held on the village square under a green bower.
10. 1824 — The first Masonic funeral in the township is that of Dr. John B. Johnson.
11. 1830 — Mrs. Joseph Darling, daughter of 'Priest' Edwards of Ripley, teaches the first Sunday school about this year on what is later the Henry Trimner farm.
12. 1897 — The muck soil around Celeryville catches fire, an unusual event tied to the community's exceptionally organic, peat-rich farmland.
13. 1897 — Willard's Water Department, serving the township's northwest edge, is established on October 7.
14. 1996 — Plymouth Greenlawn Cemetery Chapel, in the part of Plymouth village that touches the township's southeast corner, is added to the National Register of Historic Places.
15. 2020 — Census recorded Celeryville's population at 222, still a working muck-farming settlement roughly a mile south of Willard.
16. 2020 — The census counts 2,409 people in New Haven Township.

Stories

When the ground itself caught fire

Celeryville's farmland is muck: thick, black, waterlogged organic soil built up over centuries in a former wetland, so fertile that farmers there could squeeze one or two extra harvests a season out of it compared with ordinary upland soil. Dutch immigrant farmers settled the community to work that ground, growing celery in such volume that the place took its name from the crop. But muck soil has a strange vulnerability ordinary dirt does not: dried out in the wrong conditions, its high organic content can smolder and burn underground for long stretches, resisting easy extinguishing because the fuel is the ground itself. In 1897 that is exactly what happened at Celeryville -- the soil that made the community's fortune caught fire, a genuinely odd hazard of farming wetland-derived ground that has no equivalent on the region's ordinary till-soil farms.

The first death in New Haven

George Beymer came to New Haven Township in 1815, in the years when the settlement grew fast, and died on June 24, 1817 of an illness he had caught while in Franklin County, Ohio. His was the first death in the settlement and he left a large family. An old settler told the county historians that the funeral was one of the most agonizing and solemn occasions he could remember: the women present wept and sobbed through the whole service. The sermon was preached by the Rev. James McIntyre. In the same month, June 1817, a Beymer daughter, Harriet, was the bride at the first wedding in the township, marrying James Skinner at Reuben Skinner's house with Caleb Palmer performing the ceremony.

Seneca on the Huron

There were no Indian villages in New Haven Township, but the county history says numerous bands passed through on their way to and from the neighboring Wyandot settlement. Most of the Indians the early settlers saw were Seneca of the Iroquois confederacy, who regarded the southwest of Huron County as their hunting ground; Wyandots and sometimes Delawares came less often. They passed in bodies of several hundred on the way to eastern hunting grounds, but more often in small companies that camped for a few days or weeks beside the Huron River, some on ponies and some on foot, the warriors in feathered headdresses and buckskin and the women in short skirts and beaded moccasins. They brought baskets, deer hams and trinkets to trade for bread, flour or meal. An Indian burial ground was said to lie on the east bank of the river, and the early settlers also found the remains of a circular earthwork in the west of the township, within the later village plat, with large trees growing on its embankments.

Local history sources: en.wikipedia.org · en.wikipedia.org · en.wikipedia.org · en.wikipedia.org · archive.org

Mostly private wells The water here

• Willard City66% of residentsWest Branch Huron River, stored in Willard's upground reservoir
• Plymouth Village34% of residentsWest Branch Huron River, stored in Willard's upground reservoir

High-hazard dams (1)

Private schools (1)

Bridges rated poor (2)

Spills reported since 2021 (1)

Money issues on the ballot since 2019: 1 of 1 passed.

Ballot issues

Elections for office

Winners in bold. Results from the county board of elections' official canvass unless marked.

Auditor of State record

• No fiscal caution, watch or emergency on the Auditor of State's lists.
• Agreed Upon Procedures, 2023 to 2024, released 2025-08-26

Cite this page